Mentoring: The Human Touch was a direct outcome of a workshop conducted
by Lu Ann Darling and Pauline E. Schatz, Self-Managed Mentoring Associates, at
the 1991 Kappa Omicron Nu Conclave. The theoretical structure was based upon
research conducted in 1989 with the California Dietetics Association onthe Mentoring Self-Management Program
Model.

NOTE: You can
access a complete, printable version of this course, including all linked
activities, by clicking here.

Overview

This course is offered as a contribution
to leadership development. Mentoring is a popular topic in education and business
but Self-Managed Mentoring puts a different twist on the subject. Self-development,
after all, is a personal choice, and this course enables persons to take charge
of their lives. In return for this freebie we ask only that you
write your storya sort of testimonialabout how you used
the content of this course and what the outcomes were. You may send your story
to kon.org.

You, of course, know that copyright
law holds that use of this material for purposes other than your personal self-development
requires advance approval. Approval can be acquired through kon.org.

There are at least four choices for
utilizing the course:

1. Knowledge - Read the
text to learn about mentoring, especially self-managed mentoring. The
"e-lectures" are identified by the following symbol:

3. Self-Managed Life Change - Read
the text and complete the whole series of exercises in order to make a major
difference in your life.

4. Life Change facilitated by Telementoring
or E-mail Mentoring - Enhance the process with a mentor selected by you, or
contact Kappa Omicron Nu to supply a mentor (there may be a cost associated
with this choice). Requests can be made through kon.org.

There are five sections and
twenty-seven activities in this course, and the authors recommend a minimum of
fifteen hours (for options 3 and 4 above) to get the best value for your
investment of time.

Opportunities for college credit,
CEUs, or PDUs  This course could be administered for college credit like
a special problem or as a component of a course, but persons
desiring such credit must take the initiative. Kappa Omicron Nu will support
such efforts if requested.

*Tip for navigating in the
web-based course: In addition to the links at the bottom of each activity,
the browser "Back" button will take you to the immediately preceding
location.

Section
I: Introduction/Orientation

A person cannot lead others without
first learning how to lead oneself. A mentor cannot mentor others without first
having been mentored successfully. It is in knowing thyself and
recognizing your own strengths AND weaknesses that authentic leadership begins.
It is in the experience of seek and you shall find; ask and you shall
receive that we learn the wisdom of life and powerful strategies to help
others.

Completing this course well will
require four commitments from you:

1. Self-discipline to
complete all the activities provided. Each activity will help you explore a
part of yourself that you may not have thought about before.

2. Keeping a journal. All activities
should be kept in that journal, as well as other reflections. It is recommended
that you continue writing the journal beyond the completion of the course.
Journaling can help you reflect on who you are in the world and how life
impacts you. At the beginning of your journal, label 3-5 pages with
Mentoring Needs. It is on these pages that you will accumulate a
list of mentoring needs, which will present themselves as you progress through
the activities of this course. You will find this symbol at each activity that
requires you to write in your journal:

3. Design for yourself a support
group of three other people that you can call on as you progress through this
course of study. The members of this group can serve you in the following
ways:

As your point of accountability.
You need to tell someone that you are doing a specific exercise and that you
want him or her to check up on you to be certain you have completed it by a
date certain. Select someone who can motivate you.

As your confidant. There will be
things that come to you through your reflections that you may want to talk
about. Such conversations may be very personal. Select someone you can trust in
those moments.

As your cheerleader. There may
be times you will want to not follow through with this course. Select someone
who will remind you of your vision as you begin this course.

Activity 1.1: My Support Group

Identify your support group in your journal.

As you progress through this course,
lean on these people to help you in your personal and professional
growth.

4. On a daily basis, ask yourself the following questions in the
morning and in the evening. Asking these questions will set you on a healthy
path of proactive noticing of you in the world. The questions can simply be a
mental exercise that takes about 3-5 minutes in the morning and evening OR you
can journal your responses. The key is to develop a pattern of consistent
questions that empower you on a daily basis.

Morning Empowerment Questions

1. What am I excited
about in my life now?

What about that makes me excited?
How does that make me feel?

2. What am I grateful about in my
life now?

What about that makes me
grateful? How does that make me feel?

3. What am I enjoying most in my
life right now?

What about that do I enjoy? How
does that make me feel?

4. What am I committed to in my life
right now?

What about that makes me
committed? How does that make me feel?

5. Who do I love? Who loves
me?

What about that makes me loving?
How does that make me feel?

Evening Empowerment Questions

(Robbins,
1991)

1. What have I given
today?

2. What did I learn today?

3. How has today added to the
quality of my life?

4. How did I contribute to others
today?

5. How did I show my love and
compassion for others today?

What is mentoring? Why is it important to
you?

A mentor is generally considered a
more experienced person who alternately functions as a coach, counselor, and a
teacher. The mentoring relationship has many functions:

Enhance skill and intellectual
development,

Welcome and facilitate entry and
advancement in the work situation,

Expand horizons and
perspectives,

Acquaint the mentee with values,
customs, resources, and professional connections,

Model the professional role,

Advise, give moral support and
build confidence,

Furnish a relatively objective
assessment of strengths and weaknesses,

Define the newly emerging self and
to encourage the dream.

Mentoring is carried on in informal
and formal ways. It can be done through facilitation by another individual or
through self-facilitation. This course focuses on creating a Self-Managed
Mentoring Program.

Completing this course well will put
you on the path to successful adulthood, a promising professional life, and a
healthy, integrated personal approach to life.

Informal mentoring

Most people experience the informal
happenstance mentoring throughout a lifetime. Lucky
mentees are chosen by persons who take a special interest in them
and promote their personal or career development. A major problem with this
informal mentoring is that women and minorities are the least likely to be
adopted by a mentor. The old boys network for
promising young men, especially white, middle class men, has not yet been fully
adapted for other deserving candidates. Thus the reason for the development of
more formal mentoring programs and services.

Formal mentoring

Formal mentoring programs vary in
scope and design. Some are sophisticated programs with staffs for training and
monitoring progress; others are volunteer-led networks for supporting mentors
and mentees. Professional associations and business are likely sponsors of
mentoring networks. Personal coaches, like a personal trainer, are available
for hire by either a corporate professional development department for
promising career candidates OR by an individual who is determined to fulfill
career dreams.

Self-Facilitation or Mentoring
Self-Management Program

Through self-facilitation or
self-management, mentees identify, understand, and use their unique
developmental patterns to manage their own mentoring. In other words, by
observing yourself objectively, and reflecting on what you observe,
you can determine exactly what you need to overcome your next developmental
challenge. A mentoring self-management program places the responsibility onto
the mentee and expands the notion of mentoring to include peers, parents and
siblings, biographies, illuminating materials and media, reflection on field
experiences and serial mentoring.

There are two types of
self-management: Passive and Proactive

Passive self-management
occurs when you put yourself in a situation where things will happen to you,
which you believe will be empowering. By placing yourself in certain
situations, you are provided with experiences, which affect you more or less
profoundly. When you choose to enroll in a course or to work in a particular
environment, you are practicing passive self-management.

Proactive self-management
occurs when you consciously choose to alter your behaviorto interrupt how
you normally do things, believing this can benefit you. You may choose to speak
or listen or behave in a new way. You take the initiativeit is your idea,
your choice, your action. For example, choosing to exercise is proactive
self-management for a person who may normally be inactive. Choosing to wear a
different style of clothing may alter how people respond to you. Beginning
meditation, expressing feelings you usually hide, or sharing secrets are all
examples of proactive self-management.

This proactive self-management focus
allows you to work through all the barriers you internally create to resist
change in behavior. Using your conscious will in pursuit of a personal goal is
the thing that gives you the energy to keep on the path of pursuit. As you
become more proactive in your life, you will also become stronger.

As you pursue your career, you will
ultimately be in a profession where you must mentor and lead others. For a
mentor-in-training, self-management is essential. You need to take on training
yourself to be fully conscious and as aware as possible. This self-management
training needs to become a life practice, focused on looking for ways of
continuous self-improvement.

This course is just the beginning.
It provides you tools and resources to identify your needs and processes, ways
to assess the timing of the mentoring activity as well as tools to determine
the best mentoring form to overcome the unique personal and professional
challenges you face.

Activity 1.2: The Story of Me

(Cameron, 1996, p. 50).

In your journal (after the Mentoring
Needs pages), title the next several pages as follows:

Years 0-5, Years 6-10, Years 11-15,
Years 16-20, Years 21-25, etc. in five year increments to your current
age.

On each page allocated, answer the
following questions about that time frame:

Staying in touch with all of you
is important as you begin to reflect on where you want to go and what you
need.

This historical review may take 2
pages or maybe 20. Some of it may be difficult to recall and some will flow
quite easily. Reviewing the history of any relationship is the first step in
determining the next developmental challenges.

Activity 1.3: Reflection

After completing the narrative review of your
life, record your observations in your journal, completing at least one of the
following sentences:

Ive become
aware

After some reflection, Ive
decided

Im proud of myself because
I

A pattern I have
noticed

Activity 1.4: Who were your informal
mentors?

Activity 1.5: Coat of Arms

Personal coats of
arms have never been popular in the United States, but many families have these
heraldic devices that reference their ancestral heritage. The "Coat of
Arms" strategy is not concerned with the inherited heraldry of family
hand-me-down symbols but with the desirable qualities with which you would like
to be associated.

In the appropriate areas of your
coat of Arms, answer six questions, not in words but in pictures.
The drawings may be simple, even crude, as long as they mean something to you;
as long as you know what they express. This strategy seeks the quality of
values, not the quality of artwork.

Why symbols? Not only are symbols or
pictographs the traditional means of illustrating heraldic shields, but the use
of abstract symbols may force us to think beyond words. As a famous French
writer said, "Many of us use words to conceal thought more than to express
it." Here we will avoid being too verbal and hiding behind words. Let's
see what we can picture.

DIRECTIONS:

Draw pictures to depict your answers
to six (6) of the following questions.

QUESTIONS:

These questions will help you
identify the personal qualities that you wish to represent you.

1. What do you regard as your
greatest personal achievement?

2. What do you regard as your
family's greatest achievement?

3. What is the one thing that other
people can do to make you most happy?

4. What would you do if you had one
year to live and were guaranteed success in whatever you attempted?

5. What three words would you most
like to have said about you if you died today?

6. What is one value, a deep
commitment, from which you would never budge?

7. What is the material possession
most significant to you?

8. What is your greatest achievement
of the past year?

9. What three words (qualities)
would you like to have associated with you? These could become your personal
motto, words to live by.

After completing the Coat of Arms
exercise, record your observations in your journal, completing at least one of
the following sentences:

Ive become aware

After some reflection, Ive
decided

Im proud of myself because
I

Activity 1.6: Mentoring Needs

Have any of the activities in Section I suggested any needs you may
have for mentoring? Enter those needs on the first pages of your
journal.

Activity 1.7: Self-Empowerment

Have you been faithfully asking yourself the morning and evening
empowerment questions? Remember, they will help you notice how you are in the
world, but they will also help you see your life in a positive light and reduce
your stress level!

Have you been using your support
group of three to keep you accountable to this process? What do you need from
them to complete the next section of this course?